Customer Reviews

The Perfect SalesForce: The 6 Best Practices of the World's Best Sales Teams

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Ignore this book's title. Surely Derek Gatehouse knows that there is no such entity as a "perfect sales force" but indeed there is much of great value to be learned from what the book's subtitle suggests: "the best practices of the world's best sales teams." However, questions immediately arise: Which are they? Who selected them? According to which criteria? How recent was the information when the selections were made? (Note: Most of the companies that Peters and Waterman praise in In Search of Excellence no longer meet the criteria by which they were selected and several of them have since been acquired by another company.) Gatehouse shares the results of the Gallup organization's 30-year study of top performance, which includes more than 3,000,000 people thus far. He asserts that people rather than processes process sell, and, that those who are "natural born" sales people will "sell circles around all the rest."

How to develop such a sales force? "The only feasible growth system for a sales force, and the only way to build a sales force of top performers, is to learn the language of selling talents. This will let you cast the exact right talents into each stage of your particular sales type, and then gain an understanding of what specific conditions generate autonomous top performance from these gifted sellers." That in the proverbial "nutshell" is what Gatehouse's book is all about: explaining "the formula for a top-producing sales force, one that is made up primarily of those salespeople that sell four times more than all others." This formula takes into full account three separate but interdependent components: "natural-born" sales aptitude, performance enhancement training, and the environment (i.e. "external conditions")in which people sell.

With regard to how Gatehouse organizes his material, he introduces the six best practices of "the perfect salesforce" in Chapter 2 and then devotes a separate chapter to each. For example, #1 consists of ten "selling talents" that Gatehouse examines with rigor and eloquence and #6 consists of best practices in results-based management. In the final chapter, he explains the need for a Perfect SalesForce committee that has only one purpose: to ensure that initiatives "stay on track" as the six best practices are adopted during what amounts to a two-phase process: determination of the changes that need to be made and then the on-going, daily operations. "This latter phase is where companies go off track; everyone is too close to the daily grind to step back and see things objectively. It is here that your committee best serves." Gatehouse then offers a detailed case history of an actual company, Dilan Ink, with which he was closely associated. He explains a four-stage process that begins with an assessment of the current situation and concludes with training.

For whom will this book be most valuable? Certainly anyone who serves on a "Perfect SalesForce committee" whose membership should include a C-level executive, someone from HR, the sales manager, at least one top sales performer (preferably more), and the company owner(s), if appropriate. Others who should read this book are those who are sales administrators or aspire to become one. My own rather extensive experience in sales and sales management suggests that most "natural born" sales people, those who "sell circles around all the rest," would rather be selling than reading about others who do...one man's opinion. However, I think CEOs should be among those who read this book because Gatehouse offers some valuable perspectives on how those in the salesforce, out on the proverbial "front line," in active and frequent contact with current and prospective customers, can provide invaluable competitive intelligence, especially about market trends.

Gatehouse encourages those who purchase his book to check out a wealth of resources at www.theperfectsalesforce.com that include articles, training videos, tools, his daily blog, and a members' forum.

In The Perfect Salesforce, Gatehouse brings up a subject many companies avoid when dealing with sales issues and that is 'performance conditions.' I have witnessed A player sales reps become C player reps simply by changing companies. I have also seen C player reps become top performers when assigned a different territory. How can this be? It points to the issue of talent being an insufficient remedy. Talented sales people need to be placed into conditions optimized to their unique gifts. Fit is the critical element.

Are you asking your reps to do to much? Read this book to find out.

Few people would argue that one of the toughest job in nearly every organization resides within the sales department. However, there is a wide performance variance that separates the slugs and superstars along the sales spectrum. When you consider that a top-sales producer may generate four times the gross revenue of their closest colleague, it's easy to see why billions are spent each year trying to find the secret necessary to duplicate that success. Author Derek Gatehouse took up that challenge and interviewed more than 2,000 executives to uncover the formula for extreme sales success. In his resulting book titled The Perfect Sales Force, Gatehouse offers six critical practices that the best sales teams have in common. These best-in-class practices alone are worth much more than the price of the book. But Gatehouse expertly enlarges them to help sales managers identify and assess those intangible attributes that drive successful sales, which is why Soundview recommends this read. If you need to jumpstart your sales team, you need to get this book.

Derek Gatehouse has spent more than 30 years working at every level of sales in many industries. This book distills what he has learned about what works in sales and what he teaches to his clients as CEO of Vendis, Inc. The foundational idea of the book is that there is no secret to sales that you can give to people without sales talent that will turn them into top performers. Instead, he argues, you need to understand the kind of talents your company needs in its salespeople and hire the most talented people of that type that you can. He urges you to study your most successful salespeople and guides you in what to look for in their work. By learning what they do right you can hire more people with the same abilities. The key is to be more dispassionate and not hire someone because they seem good to you or that you like them. You need performers. So, learn what makes such people tick and hire them.

The book has 9 chapters and an appendix with a 50-page case study of a real company that illustrates the entire process he lays out in this book. And a good index.

The nine chapters cover:

1) The Perfect Salesforce - he makes his case for native talent over the notion of teaching sales.
2) The 6 Best Practices - The 10 Selling Talents, Sorting Stages for Talent, Talent-Based Hiring, Pay and Quota, Sales Behavior Training, Result-Based Management.
3) The 10 Selling Talents
4) Sorting Sales Stages for Talent
5) The Talent Based Hiring Process
6) The Pay Plan and Quota
7) Sales Behavior Training
8) Result-Based Management
9) Growing `The Perfect Salesforce'

While the first 3 of the best practices are likely to be the most different for you (at least they were for me), the author lays out his principles very well. He also provides online forms and even a bookmark you can print out to help you.

I think what Gatehouse says about sales makes sense and much of it agrees with my personal experience. There are naturally talented salespeople, and there are different sales requirements at different companies, for different sales assignments, and the way you set up their pay and quote matters and great deal. And I like his emphasis on sales training having something to offer in adding refinements to talent and management by emphasizing the positive. His saying that under performing salespeople are miscast is spot on. What others call firing he calls releasing and I like that wording a lot. I did the same thing when I found people who just couldn't get a job done. My emphasis was that they deserved to be successful, but the job they had was not going to help them be successful.

A thoughtful and helpful book.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

I wish there were more books about sales management and business development that had case studies. This is one of those books that goes over a case study. There are many styles of sales people and this author makes the obvious point of building on the strengths of the indivisual BD rather than the weakness. The writer goes over 10 traits of hiring BD's that are pretty much spot on. Good book. As with all sales books, this will not makes your team of BD's instant top sellers, but it is a reminder and has some excellent ideas."

I can't believe the reviews I'm reading about this book. Pure fluff with no substance and unrealistic expectations based on the prescribed practices.After 20 years of building top producing sales forces in several very different industries, I can say that I don't agree with any of it. I believe that the right scalable plan and process can, and will create a top producing team without ANY of the ideas in this book.
I don't subscribe to the "natural sales person" idea. I believe that the correct management and process can develop top producers from a diverse background that wouldn't be looked at otherwise if you applied the ideas in this book.

I am most of the way through first reading. It is an easy read and very informative. Will need to read a couple more times to fully digest and put in practice. I believe it will be very useful for our company.

You could probably run a small country with the money sales organizations spend on standardized training. Unfortunately, most of it goes right down the drain, according to sales guru Derek Gatehouse, who says many of today's highly touted sales methods don't make much difference. To him, they are all so much voodoo. Gatehouse believes that instead of wasting money on ordinary training and cookie-cutter processes, companies should focus on hiring only people with "naturally born" sales talent and enlisting only the very best sales managers to supervise them. Then, they should carefully structure their pay programs to give salespeople true incentives. Gatehouse developed his robust sales acumen while toiling for three decades in America's toughest sales trenches. Given this lucid manual, getAbstract finds that he has a lot to teach most companies about organizing and running topflight sales teams.